Everything we know and care about, now more?

• Due: Learning Analysis & Portfolio; YOU MUST COME TO CLASS AND PRESENT your LA to receive your credits for this assignment

What was the argument of the course?

Where did you fit into it?

What books connected you to it?

What happens now?

See you at WorldWise on Wednesday at 4pm

Hi wmst 300 folks --

I got no negatives for using our Wed class time for attending the WorldWise event, so that's where we shall be for the next class.

It starts at 4:30. You must meet me there at 4pm to sign-in, a half-hour after our usual class beginning. You should remain until at least 6pm, the time our class usually ends.

Note that the event is at the Dance Theater at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, northeast of our usual location on campus. Check campus maps if you are not familiar with that area and need parking information or walking information. BE SURE TO ALLOW ENOUGH TIME TO GET THERE AT 4PM.

Driving Directions here.

I will answer the invitation myself for the whole class, so don't do it individually. If you have already done it individually, go back to the site and remove your indiv name and leave a note to say you will be attending with wmst 300 as a class.

Here is another message from the organizers to attenders: please do check out this website before attending the event.


Message about WORLDWISE: FABLES AND FORMULAS

Hello All,

I thought you might all be interested in checking out this additional website that was developed this last week by the LBSC 752 Information Access in the Arts course taught by Kari Kraus. They have compiled a modest bibliography of resources designed to support the Fables and Formulas symposium. They've published it in wiki format at
http://fablesandformulas.wetpaint.com/
Enjoy,
Beth


Here are the details of the event in invitation form:

you're invited!
WORLDWISE: FABLES AND FORMULAS

Host: Beth Loizeaux, Associate Dean, Arts and Humanities
Location: The Dance Theatre
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, College Park, MD
When: Wednesday, November 14, 4:30pm
Phone: 301.405.5646
I'd like to extend a special invitation to you to attend the second roundtable in the three part series titled: WorldWise: The Arts and Humanities in the 21st Century. This conversation focuses specifically on the relations of the Sciences and the Arts and Humanities. I hope you can join us. Here are the details:

"Fables and Formulas: The Sciences and the Arts & Humanities Look at Each Other"

How do the arts and the humanities matter to scientists and to their work? Where might there be common ground for collaboration?

In this roundtable conversation, Dean James Harris of the UMD College of Arts and Humanities, award-winning choreographer and Artist-In-Residence, Liz Lerman, and panelists, Eduardo Kac, a Chicago artist internationally known for his interactive net installations and his bio art, and esteemed UMD faculty, Sandra Greer, Jordan Goodman, and Matthew Kirschenbaum will explore these questions. The event will include an audience question & answer session.
Attendees are invited to a reception at 6:30 pm, immediately following the pr

Reconceptualizations and democracy, feminist observations

• Duggan, Equality?
• Due: Summary paper #5 (Duggan); decide which summaries you will post to Amazon

What are the cultural politics Duggan cares about?

How does it compare to your own politics and observations?

What forms of social justice does Duggan emphasize?

How do her understandings help us consider our own desires for social justice?

What does Duggan think we should be doing? What would that take?

Where do you fit in? Where do you want to be?

Wikipedia: neoliberalism:
"Neoliberalism refers to a political movement that espouses economic liberalism as a means of promoting economic development and securing political liberty. The movement is sometimes described as an effort to revert to the economic policies of the 18th and 19th centuries classical liberalism.^[1] Strictly in the context of English-language usage the term is an abbreviation of "neoclassical liberalism", since in other languages liberalism has more or less retained its classical meaning."

Duggan, xi, xii:
Five phases of neoliberal hegemony:

• 1) "attacks on progressive redistributive internationalism" in 50s and 60s
• 2) attacks on "downwardly redistributive" social movements in 60s and 70s
• 3) "pro-business activism" in the 70s, organizing to to 'redistribute resources upward"
• 4) "culture wars" in the 80s and 90s
• 5) nondistributive "equality" politics for global consumption and upward distribution of resources in 21st century.

Climate for Higher Education and the Corporatization of Academe (11-07)
Spellings Report and responses: brief bibliography:


A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U. S. Higher Education. Report of the Commission Appointed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings (Sept. 2006). http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/index.html

commission report: http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports.html

USDofED update: http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/plan/index.html

Carnegie response (Lee Schulman) http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/news/sub.asp?key=51&subkey=2024

AAC&U response to draft report http://www.aacu.org/About/statements/SpellingsFinalDraft.cfm

AAC&U response to report http://www.wpacouncil.org/node/486

MLA response: http://www.mla.org/comments_spellingsreport

NASULGC Voluntary System of Accountability http://www.nasulgc.org/NetCommunity/Document.Doc?id=170


STUDENTS NOTE:
I'd like you to look over your summary for today and make sure it really summarizes the WHOLE book, not just the beginning. If that is not really clear, please rewrite the summary for today. I will give permission for folks to post again tomorrow if that is the case. Also, the summary part is intended to be substantive -- about a page and half worth of discussion and description, before anything else is added. So, -- check yours out -- make sure it is substantive and thoroughly overs the whole book, and if there is any question in your mind that it does this, please rewrite it and repost it. Summaries too brief and too limited won't get credit.

Interdisciplinarity is risky and worldly practices matter

• Haraway, How Like a Leaf
• Due: Summary paper #4 (Haraway); LOOK HER UP ON THE WEB

What do you learn about Haraway from looking her up on the web? How does that knowledge help you put this book in contexts that matter? What are some of those contexts?

Compare and contrast this book to the others we have read so far. What do you notice?

Why is this an interview?

What work does this book do for our better understandings of feminist theory? Where could it take us?

Funny Article

Funny article that could spark interesting womens studies converstation...

Kenyan Monkeys Make Lewd Gestures at Women Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Who's a cheeky monkey? Kenyan officials are not sure how to handle a troop of rude monkeys that's been making lewd gestures at women, London's Daily Telegraph reports. "Can the [tourism] minister deploy game rangers ... to deal with the monkey menace?" pleaded local representative Paul Muite in Kenya's national parliament last month, to accompanying laughter. "These creatures have clearly shown that they have no respect for women." Gichuki Kabukuru of the Kenya Wildlife Service told the Telegraph that monkeys and baboons commonly harass women, gesturing at them and touching their own private parts. "Even in our camps," he explained, "when men are out on patrol and the monkeys see women and children, they will become very naughty and make lewd signs at them." Residents of the Kabete region south of the capital, Nairobi, say women harvesting crops have taken to dressing as men to avoid being bothered by the perverted primates.

Obligations to Identity

This Bridge We Call Home, Section V.
"Shouldering more identity than we can bear"...seeking allies in academe
Mehrnoush Karimian and Sarah Sample

“By being one of the few recognizable faces in a sea of white academics, we, whether we want to or not, represent our raza. This is not necessarily a good thing. We are just who we are- individuals. We are not representatives of countries, gender, ethnicity, or sexuality. Yet, because there are so few of us, we often end up shouldering more identity than we can bear.” (p.364)

Does being part of a specific marginalized group automatically make you a representative or teacher for that identity?
Do we have a responsibility to our group to educate others?

“Transformation requires new strategic approaches… I argue for a politics of shredding the fabric of institutional regiment through refusal, sabotage, thievery, defecation. In doing so I acknowledge the necessary connectedness of subcultural resistance to other resistances, especially that of unlikely coalition- building.” (p.379-380)

What are appropriate sites of change? (i.e. the work place)
While reconceptualizing and critiquing your own identity, at what point do you cross the line between being collegial and being true to yourself, no matter how disloyal that may be?
At what point are you allowed to take action against the academic institution without risking your job?
What are some strategies that you use/feel could be used to build a union between subcultures and/or create a more inviting environment for people to learn more through asking questions? (i.e. the Cry-Smile mask-p.397)
Once you do get a coalition built and running, what is the next step to reaching out to people who are not as willing or open to learning about different subcultures and identities?
What is the incentive for a majority group to be pro-active?
Do you look at tokenism as a first step to diversity or as a hindrance to it?

“After a number of similarly uncomfortable encounters, I begin to understand that I have to be careful, and that perhaps it isn’t wise to be open about my life.” (p.392)

If your lifestyle reflects a certain groups’ identity, but you don’t actively proclaim that you are a part of that group, are you hindering that specific groups’ movements?
If you don’t identify with a social group, how can you claim to support the issues that they deal with?
How do you incite change in what you feel to be an unsafe environment, one that you specifically feel is unwelcoming to someone of your group?



* What is our individual responsibility to bringing about diversity to our sites of change?

Presentation: Section 7- “i am the pivot for transformation”... enacting the vision

Section 7

“i am the pivot for transformation”... enacting the vision

73. “Thawing Hearts, Opening a Path in the Woods, Founding a New Lineage” -Helena Shulman Lorenz

Lorenz discusses how and why we are taught to conform to the majority culture subconsciously and consciously. She asserts that women’s studies academia is frozen in its current methodologies and suggests a new social theory for change, “…I began to dream of a new social change movement in which instead of a fixed platform or party line, we could accept the necessity for the community rituals of dialogue, evolution, and restoration. The starting point would not be obedience to a master narrative describing a single hierarchal and linear process, which always leads to scapegoating those with different and creative impulses. Rather, we might start the with recognition that every formulation was provisional and open to reframing; we would always need the ritual of community dialogue and storytelling to periodically restore the energy of our projects.” (p. 499)

75. "And Revolution is Possible": Re-Membering the Vision of This Bridge -Randy P.L. Connor and David Hatfield Sparks

Randy P.L. Conner and David Hatfield Sparks reflect on This Bridge Called My Back. They describe the feelings of community they shared with Gloria (editor of both editions of This Bridge), as well as the resentment they felt at being asked to vacate their home when lesbian separatists visited. They assert that they "recognized the need for women-only space, as [they] recognized the need for gay male space at events like Radical Faerie fatherings," but nevertheless resented being dismissed from their own home (p. 511).

77. "Forging El Mundo Zurdo: Changing Ourselves, Changing the World" - AnaLouise Keating

Keating asserts that we have been trained to define differences oppositionally, and that This Bridge authors expose stereotypes, split open labels, challenge false assumptions, and demonstrate that "it's not our differences that divide us but rather our refusal to openly discuss the differences among us" (p. 520). Keating is drawn to Gloria Anzaldua's vision of El Mundo Zurdo (the 'Left Handed World', a visionary place in which diverse people co-exist and work together to bring about revolutionary change).

She believes that we need a two-way movement to change the world. In other words, by changing ourselves, we can change the world. She says “I cannot offer pronouncements on how we can transform the world, or even how you can transform yourself. But I can tell you about my own efforts to engage in this two-way movement” (p. 522).

80. “now let us shift...the path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts” –Gloria E. Anzaldùa

Anzaldùa concentrates on the concept conocimiento, which is the journey to finding ourselves, through using all of our senses. She asserts that there are seven stages of conocimiento where, “Bits of your self die and a reborn in each step.” (p. 546) She also discusses Coyolxauhqui, which is a part of conocimiento and it is defined as personifying “…the wish to repair and heal, as well as to rewrite the stories of loss and recovery, exile and homecoming…stories that lead out of passivity and into agency, out of the devalued in our lives.” (p. 563) Anzaldùa presents this paradox that comes with conocimiento, “ …the knowledge that exposes your fears can also remove them. Seeing through the cracks makes you uncomfortable because it reveals aspects of yourself (shadow-beasts) you don’t want to own. Admitting your darker aspects allows you to break out of your self-imposed prison.” (p. 552)

Discussion Questions:

· Connor and Sparks claim that they recognize the need for women only space, just as they recognize the need for gay male space. When are exclusionary spaces helpful, and to who? When are they not appropriate?

· Keating gives examples of premises that guide her in her life in the home, written word, and classroom that she believes help her promote transformation. What do you think of her premise that “out of all the categories we today employ, “race” the most destructive”? (p. 523).

· What kinds of premises do you embody to promote transformation? If Keating is right that “by changing ourselves we change the world,” what things can we do in our daily lives to change ourselves and by extension the world?

· Lorenz’s article discusses subconscious conformity to a majority culture. Can you think of instances in your life were this occurred, why, and how it could be changed?

· Anzaldùa asserts that conciemiento will lead to meaning in things that are “devalued” in our lives. What are things that are “devalued” that would if valued would lead to positive social change in our lives and transnationally?